The theme this week is fathers, but my new column at Oh Get a Grip! has more to do with my complicated history and maybe helps explain why I’m so adamant about using my “real” name:

I wanted to go on the 6th grade trip to Mexico. That’s how it started. In order to go to Mexico, I needed a passport-- which I didn’t have. In order to get a passport, I needed a birth certificate-- which I did have. Problem was, the birth certificate I had did not bear the same name that I was using. If I got a passport under the name on the birth certificate, school officials would know I was using a different name. My friends would know. Their parents would know. It would have been scandalous, I guess.

This was back in the day when you didn’t have to show documentation to enroll your kid in school. Or maybe that was just life in Florida in the 70s-- a nod to the migrant workers who weren’t in the country legally. You also didn’t have to have a Social Security card until you started working. I guess my mother assumed I wouldn’t have to prove who I was until I was at least a teenager and she’d deal with it then-- but then I asked to go on the Mexico trip.

That was how I ended up in a courtroom at the age of 11, telling a judge about life with my parents so I could get my name changed. I ended up with a new birth certificate that bore the name I’d been using since I was 9 months old. Of course, to get there, I had to listen to my mother answer the judge’s question about who my birth father was: “I don’t know.”

It was a lie.

Posted by Kristina in Writing at 12:16 AM Permalink